Philosophy

In On Aristotle: Saving Politics from Philosophy, Alan Ryan examines Plato's most famous student and sharpest critic, whose writing has helped shape over two millennia of Western philosophy, science, and...

Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, first published in 1764, is a series of short, radical essays - alphabetically arranged - that form a brilliant and bitter analysis of the social and religious...

How to know that you exist. How to be an object of desire. How to think like a bat. How to bring meaning to life. From the realm of the...

Words of Wisdom brings together 360 of Philosophy's most famous quotations, explaining their meaning and telling the stories behind them. Western philosophy may be said to have begun in ancient...

From the preface to its closing pages "Beyond Good and Evil" is fired by a passion which expresses itself in an idiom of poetic metaphor. Yet this is philosophy. It...

Copleston, an Oxford Jesuit and specialist in the history of philosophy, first created his history as an introduction for Catholic ecclesiastical seminaries. However, since its first publication (the last volume...

Copleston, an Oxford Jesuit and specialist in the history of philosophy, first created his history as an introduction for Catholic ecclesiastical seminaries. However, since its first publication (the last volume...

Great Thinkers, AZ brings together 100 short, accessible snapshots of the people who have shaped Western thought from the ancient Greeks to today. The snapshots, written by the world's leading...

This field-defining collection consolidates and builds momentum in the burgeoning area of affect studies. The contributors include many of the central theorists of affect-those visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally...

The Cheese and the Worms is a study of the popular culture in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of one man, a miller brought to trial during...

Ever since it was first unleashed in 1818 the story of Victor Frankenstein and his reanimated, stitched-together corpse has inspired intense debate. Can organic life be reanimated using electricity or...

Like philosophy itself, How I Met Your Mother has everyone thinking. Have you ever wondered why you identify so strongly with Barney despite the fact that he's such a douche?...

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card's award-winning 1985 novel, has been discovered and rediscovered by generations of science fiction fans, even being adopted as reading by the U.S. Marine Corps. Ender's...

Futurama is a quirky, animated sitcom created by Simpson's mastermind Matt Groening. Since it first aired on the FOX network from 1999 to 2003, its many dedicated fans have created...

In The Good Wife and Philosophy, fifteen philosophers look at the deeper issues raised by this stirring TV drama. The Good Wife gives us courtroom battles in the tradition of...

By many accounts, HBO's The Wire was and remains the greatest and most important television drama of all time. Conceived by writers David Simon and ex-Baltimore homicide detective Ed Burns,...

What makes humans different from other animals, what humans are entitled to do to other species, whether time travel is possible, what limits should be placed on science and technology,...

Few novels have had more influence on individuals and literary culture than J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Published in 1951 and intended by Salinger for adults (early drafts...

Rick, Lori, Shane, Carl, Dale, Andrea, and Michonne--human survivors of a zombie apocalypse--don't know much about philosophy, but philosophical ideas continue to shamble on through their world, and there's no...

In a promotional video for the eighth season of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David appears as Godzilla, walking through the streets of New York City, terrorizing everyone who sees...

Neil Gaiman is the imaginative wizard behind the best-selling novels American Gods (soon to be an HBO series) and The Anansi Boys, the graphic series The Sandman, and popular children's...

Breaking Bad, hailed by Stephen King, Chuck Klosterman, and many others as the best of all TV dramas, tells the story of a man whose life changes because of the...

From their commanding role in the so-called British Invasion of the early 1960s to their status as the elder statesmen (and British Knight) of rock and roll, the Stones have...

This entertaining collection of essays deserves to exist because Sherlock Holmes sees things others don't. He sees the world in a different way, and by so doing, allows us to...

SpongeBob SquarePants and Philosophy is designed to introduce fans of SpongeBob SquarePants to some of the great thinkers and questions in philosophy. The essays can be shared by young and...

Since the Doom series, First Person Shooter (FPS) videogames have ricocheted through the gaming community, often reaching outside that community to the wider public. While critics primarily lampoon FPSs for...

What explains the huge popular following for Dexter, currently the most-watched show on cable, which sympathetically depicts a serial killer driven by a cruel compulsion to brutally slay one victim...

The progressive/hard rock band Rush has never been as popular as it is now. A documentary film about the band, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, which was released in the...

Since 1968's Night of the Living Dead, zombie culture has steadily limped and clawed its way into the center of popular culture. Today, zombies and vampires have taken over TV...

Arguably the most important pop-culture import from the East to the West, manga is a phenomenon that can no longer be ignored. Yet just as much as it is a...

This volume in the Popular Culture and Philosophy series delves into the tragic and redemptive history of the Boston Red Sox baseball franchise. Drawing on philosophers from Aristotle to Sartre,...

This collection of incisive articles gives a leading team of international philosophers a free kick toward exploring the complex and often hidden contours of the world of soccer. What does...

Facebook and Philosophy is an entertaining, multi-faceted exploration of what Facebook means for us and for our relationships. With discussions ranging from the nature of friendship and its relationship to...

Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) in videogame history, World of Warcraft is everywhere -- from episodes of...

Led Zeppelin, who bestrode the world of rock like a colossus, have continually grown in popularity and influence since their official winding up in 1980. They exasperated critics and eluded...

The popularity of the His Dark Materials trilogy has generated a major motion picture, a stage play, video games, and a new prequel. The series has also been highly controversial...

Anime and Philosophy focuses on some of the most-loved, most-intriguing anime films and series, as well as lesser-known works, to find what lies at their core. Astro Boy, Dragon Ball...

The devil gets his due in the latest entry in the Pop Culture and Philosophy series. Supervillains and Philosophy features an international cabal of philosophers and comics industry professionals conspiring...

Transformers began with toys and a cartoon series in 1984 and has since grown to include comic books, movies, and video games -- its science fiction story has reached an...

Since their breakthrough hit "Creep" in 1993, Radiohead has continued to make waves throughout popular and political culture with its views about the Bush presidency (its 2003 album was titled...

At the head of The Colbert Report, one of the most popular shows on television, Stephen Colbert is a pop culture phenomenon. More than one million people backed his fake...

From the bedtime story by L. Frank Baum to the classic 1939 film, no story has captured the imaginations of generations of children and adults like The Wizard of Oz....

With both young and adult gamers as loyal fans, The Legend of Zelda is one of the most beloved video game series ever created. The contributors to this volume consider...

Take a trip on the Starship Enterprise before the "Star Trek" film teleports itself into cinemas. The spirit of exploration that characterizes "Star Trek"'s various television and cinematic incarnations is...